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Archive for July, 2012

This is a 2nd part of takeout from last ATG Live Webcast June 14 was an introduction of new ‘Online Patching Cycle’ in Oracle EBS R12.2. ADOP (ADOnline Patching) will replace ADPATCH as the 12.2 new patching tool. The first-hand information about ADOP shows that it will be follow phases from Prepare, Apply, Finalize, Cutover to Clean-up.

Oracle Application will be only offline during the Cutover phase as presented below:

In the Prepare phase (Preparing the File System) Patch Edition and Run Edition will be synchronized on the file system and a new Patch Edition in the database will be created. All files on the Patch Edition are an exact copy of the files on the Run Edition.

What type of synchronization?

Incremental synchronization is the default

Only files changed in the last patch application are copied

Full synchronization available if necessary

Patch Edition is created in the database and all code objects in the Patch Edition begin as pointers to code objects in the Run Edition. Objects are only “Actualized” into the Patch Edition when a new revision of the code is applied. Storage objects such as tables are not copied. New patching standards are followed for upgrading storage objects.

In the Apply phase (applying patches) execution of patch drivers to update Patch Edition will be done. We can apply multiple patches and patches are applied to the copy (Patch Edition) as the production application is unaffected by the changes. Users are connected to the Application and can perform their work unaffected by the patch. Changes are made in the isolation of an Edition and the running application is unaffected by these changes

In the Finalize phase we will be performing the final operations that can be executed while the Application is Online like compile invalid objects, generate derived objects and Pre-compute DDL to be run at Cutover

In the Cutover phase downtime will be taken and users are logged off the system. The Patch file system is promoted to be the Run file system and the Patch database edition is promoted to be the Run database edition. Next action will be to perform final maintenance operations and finally users are brought back online on the patched system. We can also pause patching cycle at this stage for as long as it is required to wait for an appropriate downtime window (minutes)

In the Clean-up phase Cleanup occurs after users have been brought back online to the newly patched Application. The pre-patch file system is now ready for the next patching cycle and Database code objects patched in the latest patching cycle are deleted from Old Editions and once all objects are deleted from an Old Edition it is also deleted.

In the Abort phase the Online Patching Cycle can be aborted at any time prior to Cutover

Two complete file systems are always present Run Edition – Used by the running Application Patch Edition – Either, Currently being patched or waiting for the next patch cycle. These two files systems are rotated between Run and Patch during every patch cycle. Old Editions these editions are only used to store code objects that have not been patched in a later edition and we can remove by cleanup when no longer needed.